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Doing the elliptical machine at the gym and talking with a friend yesterday…
“I just keep talking to so many people who are unhappy in their marriages. Not sort of unhappy but deeply unhappy. I don’t think they even hear how unhappy they are, they’re so used to it. I’ve really been ruminating lately on why so many people stay in a marriage and others leave. I know there are a lot of people who would have stayed in my marriage, who would have thought, ‘It’s not so bad.’ or’…for the kids’ sake.’”
“Well, it’s the path of least resistance. It’s familiar. Not only is the person and the habits you have with him or her familiar, but the institution itself is familiar – we see it everywhere, in movies and books – it’s a known quantity, even in its unhappy version.”
“I think people are just scared of being alone. I am scared of being lonely but not of being alone. It’s figuring out how to do one without the other. But I wish some of these people, people who I really love, would hear themselves and get out of something that isn’t feeding their soul.”
“I guess what it really comes down to is what you think marriage is for. What is its purpose. I don’t mean this to sound glib, but is it to divvy up The Work of life? Is it to care for children? Is it about loyalty at all costs? Or, is it a way to reach enlightenment; can a relationships help us learn more about ourselves and the world? If it’s the latter–and I don’t think many people think this way–then when it’s no longer doing that — feeding the soul, as you say — then perhaps it’s time to move on.”
“I think a lot of people see that as discarding the partner or the marriage as though you’d discard a sweater. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Can’t we maturely look at each other and say, ‘I still have a lot of love for you, but this is no longer helping me on my path, and I don’t think it’s helping you on yours.’? Bottom line, that’s how I feel about Alex and I think he’d say the same.”
“We hear a lot about child development,” said my friend, who is a therapist and works mainly with kids, “But there’s not much about adult development, and yet we’re all developing, it doesn’t stop when you’re eighteen; so of course we’re going to develop at different stages and at different speeds, and it may sometimes – even often – be really hard to stay in a marriage that involves different stages of development.”
Amen. If only all the world’s problems could be figured out over a half hour talk on the elliptical.
Back when it was still really hot out, I went to see a lawyer. One of my mom’s friends, a lawyer herself who is twice divorced, recommended this woman. “She is the best,” she said simply, adding that she’s won the best family law award for our state several times in a row. So I went. I was overwhelmed just going and felt nervous because I didn’t know what to ask. Like a kid at school, I felt I should be better prepared.
It turns out that she asked all the questions, writing everything down longhand on a legal pad. To many of my answers, especially regarding our lack of income or Alex’s plans to go to Africa, she nodded her head disparagingly, as though I told her that we subsist on garbage. “You have to get a job,” she intoned. The fact that I have about 5 freelance gigs at once clearly didn’t cut it with this woman. Given Alex’s poor earning powers in recent years, her mind was also rummaging through possibilities to locate a loop, find a time in his history when he was making more money and argue that that should be the bar from which we decide things. All I wanted was to understand what was going and what would happen in the months ahead as we proceeded with a divorce – something that can’t even occur when Alex is out of the country and thus is on perpetual hold. When I tried to ask, I got a very fast answer that floated well over my head and landed somewhere on the bookcase behind me. I might as well have asked my mechanic for a 30-second explanation of my exhaust system. Read the rest of this entry »
I remember sitting with Alex on a windy day–a day so windy that it took down a major Interstate bridge in Seattle –as we watched the 1992 election results on our tiny black and white TV. Neighbors from our building joined us as the day moved toward night. None of us could believe it. We were drunk on surprise.
We’d all grown up with Reagan and then spooky Bush the Elder. Some of my earliest memories were of Watergate. I was the only kid in my first grade class who voted for McGovern. With the exception of the four-year blink known as Jimmy Carter, none of us had known a Democratic president. So all day, the wind howling, the electricity flickering, and lots of weather announcements trailing along the bottom of the TV screen, we watched the results coming in from across the country. It was pre-Internet. Pre-24-hour cable. Pre-red and blue. It was just the numbers and the three anchors. At the end of the day, Bill Clinton trumped it all, and our neighbor uncovered a bottle of champagne from his vegetable crisper. Ebullience never tasted so good.
Like our marriage, a lot has happened since then, much of it disheartening. But I’m finding it relieving to know that even as we grow impatient with each other over the minutiae of divorce, Alex sends me stuff like Sarah Silverman’s Schlep campaign. Or that when his absentee ballot showed up at the house the other day and the Dems called to make sure it was there, I a) put it in a safe place, and b) called to tell Alex about it. “Fill it out! Fill it out!” I cheered encouragingly into his cell phone. It was practically like being in love again – resolutely together.
In other words, through thick and thin, sickness and health, we’re still in the same camp. I’m not sure what we’ll talk about after the campaign. At the moment, McCain’s shenanigans and Palin’s every word are the backbone of our small talk–if you can call it small talk when two people are nearly shouting their disgruntlement and registering loud guffaws at the absurdity of it all.
Bottom line, I’d remarry Alex all over again rather than have Sarah Palin as president. Really. I’m sure of that.
p.s. If you’re lurking out there, leave a comment. A little camaraderie would be nice! 
Last night was the first time Alex took the kids for the entire night. Did they stay home and play a game or rent a video? Did they go to the pool on Free Family Friday or ride their bikes? (Ok, to be fair, it was raining.) No, they went and saw a play downtown, ate dinner out, bought some small trinkets, and then got up this morning and went and had pancakes. There is close to zero in our joint account (this week is the week I close this account – I promise, I swear), and he’s made no income since July. But this doesn’t seem to faze him. And it serves to remind me of one of the most crucial ways in which we just don’t match up. Read the rest of this entry »
